The Green Room
by Tobirion
Summary: Genesis Rhapsodos, after a horrifically traumatic few months at a vengeful Hollander's mercy, eventually escapes and wanders the countryside. He's dying. He collapses in Costa del Sol - and when he awakes, he has no memory of his past life. He becomes Jen, a surfer, a good friend, and a man who is much too average to ever have been associated with ShinRa. Right?
1. Chapter 1

_This fic is a commission for my lovely friend tekka-wekka on tumblr. In what we called her 'Surfer Jen AU' Genesis goes through a lot of trauma and loses his memories... and becomes a surfer in Costa del Sol. It got a plot, a cast of OCs, Jen's friends, and we figured out how Sephiroth, Angeal, Zack, Cloud, and even Tifa fit into the overall story. So! Please enjoy - I've put a lot of work into this, and it was just so fun. And if you like the fic, feel free to let tekka-wekka know on tumblr how rad her ideas are. :)_

* * *

Costa del Sol, once a small port city on the Western Continent and now a very large one, was characterized by a few sayings locals liked to quip and that merchants liked to print on boardwalk t-shirts to sell to tourists. Ranging from the obscure to tongue-in-cheek, Costa del Sol was surely the most _jingled_ about or _dittied_ place on Gaia.

 _Our Grass is Class_ referred to its endless stretches of grassy dunes. Much of Costa's land was roped off and protected nature reserves (although it seemed crooked local government sold another couple miles of costal reserve back to the private sector every week to make room for more condos and theme parks).

These dunes were essential to local ecosystems. Without the long vines—at timeas over 30 meters—running underneath and throughout them, the winds from the ocean would shift them around too much and erode the coastline. Instead, animals were able to shelter inside them, feeding off the railroad vines inside and in turn feeding larger predators on the coast. The rolling dunes, looking like countless thick, greenish-brown brushstrokes on the canvas that was Costa, certainly gave the area a certain pulchritude.

The saying may also have referred to all the stoners in the area, most of whom probably would have rolled their eyes at someone using the pretentious word _pulchritude_ to talk about Costa.

 _We're More Golden than the Saucer_ was all over the heavily touristed areas. While the Golden Saucer was the primary attraction in the world for folks who wanted to blow their money, Costa was a close second. They also had particularly yellow sand due to local sediment deposits that, at dawn and sunset, glittered and glowed like Gil.

One that bored suburbanites everywhere liked to hang somewhere in their homes was _We all Feel the Pull of Costa del Sol._

One man didn't know about this popular saying but he sure felt that pull. He had been outside Midgar, he knew. A couple days ago—although time was weird for him, and passing in blurs of confusion and pain—someone he'd spoken to had told him they were a day or so outside Midgar and helped point him towards the sea.

Now the man was across it and on a different continent entirely. He barely remembered how he'd gotten on a ship here.

The man had been sick. _Was_ sick. He could tell from the thick green still seeping from his pores in the sun like a toxin. His chest had been bloody, but he'd had no wound—at least, he couldn't remember far back enough to where it was fresh. It was just a starburst-shaped scar on his sternum. His hands trembled and his head throbbed and his nausea, present for days now, roiled his empty stomach.

The northern tip of the Costa peninsula was less packed with tourists than the main stretch of beach. There were more open space, and those radiant, grassy dunes were just gorgeous this early in the morning. Birds chirped overhead, diving low to scoop up fish swimming too close to the surface. A friendly monster squealed somewhere, obscured by a dune. Someone with long, dark dreads was surfing out there in a wetsuit; the man's eyes slid over the figure before continuing upwards, unseeingly, as they rolled in their sockets.

His legs gave and his bare knees hit the damp sand. People liked to say that _Every Path Ends in Costa_ and this was surely the end of his… his chest heaved, his breath raspy and whistling in his parched throat. The shorts he wore were nearly soaked through in the acrid green sludge he couldn't stop sweating.

Somehow Costa del Sol had called to him. The man didn't know a whole lot but he did know that wherever he'd left—though he didn't remember it; he barely remembered anything at all beyond a couple days ago—hadn't been good for him. He was escaping from something, and the constant fear he'd felt since his consciousness had finally bubbled up from some dark, green place pushed him even now.

The man collapsed down onto the sand altogether. The tide, rising now, lapped at his bare feet and ankles. Soon it would rise above him.

The man was afraid. His arms pulled fruitlessly, trying to haul himself up the beach, but they, too, went slack as his body relaxed. He took in a large, stuttery breath as he blinked rapidly, trying to get his eyes to focus on something—but it was all gold and green, and then dark.

* * *

The man's name was Doe.

Well, no, it wasn't, not really—but the nametag on his bed in the hospital read _Doe, John_ and it had taken Doe some time to remember that typically the last name was written first and that _John_ wasn't really a last name. By then he'd already started calling himself 'Doe' in his head, though, and even that little bit of self-claim was important when he didn't own a single thing or know a single thing about himself.

He knew he had strange hair, after a nurse propped him up and gave him a hand mirror. The roots were a reddish auburn but a couple inches down it was all gray streaked with white and black, and the texture was brittle.

Mako poisoning, he was told. Someone surfing off the coast of Costa del Sol's northern tip had seen him collapsed on the sand. By then the tide had been just about up to his mouth and the surfer had resuscitated him and breathed air back into his lungs. Sand had stuck to his entire body, he had been told, due to all the mako seeping from his pores.

What's mako? Doe had asked, blearily, still nursing a devastating headache from the mako withdrawals.

His doctor had explained. Energy pumped from the earth. ShinRa Electric and Power was the premier supplier of mako on Gaia, his planet. Sometimes people fell in natural mako reservoirs or ingested more than just trace amounts. There were quite a few ways to get mako poisoning, Doe learned, and almost all of those cases ended badly. People stayed in comas the rest of their lives, or were severely disabled after surfacing. Mako ate away at body cells in some cases and caused horrible mutations in others.

 _Do you remember your name?_ No.

 _Do you remember how you got to Costa del Sol._ Not at all.

 _Do you remember anything at all about your life?_ Soon after Doe woke up in the hospital he could close his eyes and get snatches of things—more green, cold glass, metal hallways, a flash of silver. That soon left him too, so the answer when the doctor asked was: …No.

Nobody at the hospital had heard of amnesia being a side effect of mako poisoning, but Doe had it explained to him that the shock of mako overloading the system, combined with severe physical or mental trauma… that could do it.

Doe did not miss the looks of pity the hospital staff gave him. In a way he was something of a celebrity—the mystery man found on the beach. They wanted him to know about his old life as much as he did. Doe, who was in surprising physical condition, as a nurse said, puzzling over why other than exhaustion he hadn't been hurt in any way, studied his body.

Pale skin. A pointed nose. Soft lips. The palest of freckles under his eyes. Red eyebrows speckled with gray. Was he old? He wasn't old; he was in great physical shape, it looked like. Firm, defined muscles and hard angles. Had he been sick, before he got sick with mako poisoning?

A star-shaped scar on his chest puzzled him. He ran the pad of his finger over it as, on the third day after he woke up, his doctor said he had a visitor.

Doe had been unconscious for just under two weeks. During that time mako had poured from his system, soiling his hospital bed. At times his limbs had flailed with the strength to send a nurse flying back into the wall like some kind of superhuman. His visitor had showed up about a week in but had been turned away since Doe was still in his coma.

The surfer who saved him brought a gift.

Doe inclined the upper half of his bed so he could sit up and greet the man hello. He felt fine, and he kept impatiently getting up and out of the bed, but the staff insisted he rest a while longer.

"Thanks for rescuing me," Doe said.

The man—Damon, as he introduced himself—smiled crookedly. "Nearly had a heart attack when I realized there was some guy about to drown in the tide. I'm glad I got to you in time."

"Me too," Doe said, the relief evident in his voice. He didn't have much of a life like this—and who knew what kind of life he had just left behind (it probably wasn't great, from what he could piece together)—but he was still alive, thanks to Damon.

"So, the surfing crowd in Costa has this little tradition. If any of us have a bad wipe out or any kind of, you know, near death experience with a shark or ray or whatever—they get one of these." In his hand was a twine necklace with a tooth on the end surrounded by two yellow beads. "From a kraken," Damon said. "The story goes that one of us, before any of the current crowd was around, was surfing and from directly beneath her the kraken just…rose."

Damon bent his knees and then slowly rose up, his arms spread wide as if in alarm. "Her surfboard was hooked around her ankle, you know? The kraken got the board in its mouth and yanked—snapped her ankle. Still, she got it off and held on to the damn thing's back throughout all this thrashing. When it submerged again she swam all the way over to where it had flung her board and paddled back to shore. The kraken washed up on the beach a couple years ago. The pollution from the closest mako reactor and trash from Costa killed it."

"What a shame," Doe murmured.

"Yeah." Damon looked regretful too. "But a bunch of us were the first ones on the scene. They nabbed the teeth and keep 'em for people who battle through hell like that. The beads are gold glass from good ol' Costa sand."

Doe accepted it. With Damon's approving gaze on him, he slipped it around his neck and adjusted its tightness. The tooth was jagged and maybe half the length of his pointer finger. "Thank you," he said, meaning it so much. Someone was showing him kindness so soon into this (new?) life. "I think I'd have something profound to say, but they're saying I've lost all my memory before just a few days ago. So just… thanks."

Damon put his hands on his hips. His white t-shirt looked soft and comfortable, and made his blue and green bathing suit stand out even more. He was Black, and his long, gorgeous dreads were held back with a large band. He grinned at Doe. "You're welcome. You got a name yet?"

"Not really," Doe said. _Doe_ was okay for now, but he wanted to pick something that felt like him.

"Well you're welcome then, stranger."

Doe smiled again and Damon returned it, making warmth spread in Doe's belly. They talked for a while, and when his first friend left Doe settled back into his bed, feeling more alone than ever.

The doctors gave him an MRI because they were getting weird readings on some of their complicated instruments. While Doe laid there, still and quiet, he thought about the family he presumably had somewhere. Parents. A spouse? _Kids_? Friends?

It made something in his side ache.

It turned out that that aching was due to something much more mysterious than longing.

"You have materia inside your body," said some surgeon he hadn't met yet, looking baffled as he studied printouts.

"Materia?" asked Doe, struggling to remember what someone had told him a few days ago. Another head surgeon, scratching her head, told him that it was crystallized mako used to cast magic. "Ah, right," Doe said, furrowing his brow, as it came back to him. Facts—like what spaghetti was, and how to use a toilet—weren't all gone; he wasn't totally a blank slate. He could still communicate in his language, after all. Anything about himself was still totally out of reach and he definitely couldn't call himself 'worldly' anymore, if he ever could.

The small orbs were mostly along his spine—four were there in total. Another was near his heart and one lodged hear his pancreas.

"I don't… I don't even understand how they could be inside you without your body rejecting them," the female doctor said, sounding lost.

After that came discussions of removal surgery, and even if he didn't want that, then payment for the two weeks and a couple days he'd spent in the hospital. A nurse sat down with him and explained that they were going to bring in a therapist to try to help him remember enough to contact a family member for the hospital bills.

In the middle of the night that evening Doe escaped.

Yeah, he felt shitty about it—but being a slave to a hospital bill this early into his new life scared the crap out of him.

And you know what?

If he had materia along his spine (if he curved his back he could feel them if he felt with his fingers) and this scar on his chest and had suffered from mako poisoning, perhaps _purposefully administered_ , as he'd seen across the room on his doctor's clipboard… maybe he wasn't sure if he wanted to know the truth about himself yet.

So he climbed out the window. This was easier said than done, because his room was on the third floor of the building. He wrote _So sorry! I'll pay for the time I spent here someday_ on the nurse's checklist at the foot of the bed and put on the shorts he'd been found in, which had been washed while he'd been unconscious. He made sure his necklace was firmly tied around his neck and removed the protective bar from the window with one big heave.

Maybe it was the materia in him that explained why he was so strong. Maybe it was the mako—someone had told him that occasionally having it in your system could make you strong. Doe dangled from the window by his fingertips, his long body stretched. He really hoped the room below his had their shades drawn.

Something told him he'd be fine if he fell—which was _ridiculous,_ really, this being the third floor!—but he swallowed the fear in his throat and let go of the window.

And he was fine. He dropped into a roll, all muscle memory as his brain was still falling between the second and first floors somewhere and was up on his feet as quick as anything. Doe was pretty sure that would have killed most people.

He didn't stop to marvel, speed-walking barefoot down the street. Even at this hour Costa bustled with couples holding hands and sharing ice cream in the cool three a.m. air or buses dropping off tourists idling at street corners.

Costa del Sol was a big city, and the hospital sat in the middle of it. Costa del Sol was a big city in an even bigger world and wasn't in the middle of that at all. Doe wasn't even sure where he fit into _that_.

In the morning he stopped at a hair salon, explaining that he'd had mako poisoning and lost his memory and if he could borrow a pair of scissors for a couple minutes to cut his hair.

Whether they believed his story or not he was charming and also shirtless, with a handsome smile. One of the hairdressers who didn't have any customers sat him down and quick cut his hair, getting rid of the old, grey ends and then trimming a bit more.

He looked so different with short hair. It was buzzed short on the sides and longer up top, styled into this trendy flippy thing. "You'd look cute with glasses," the woman, Christa, said, tapping her chin as she surveyed him.

Doe didn't know how to thank her. "It's no trouble," she said, waving an arm. "Amnesia from mako poisoning. We hear a lot of things to get free haircuts, but that's the first time I've heard that one. Thanks for the laugh."

It wasn't worth fighting. Doe thanked her again and ducked out. His stomach growled in hunger—his last meal at the hospital seemed far away and Doe's purposeful strides slowed on the boardwalk until he was stopped altogether, disgruntled tourists going around him with dark looks.

He turned and put his forearms on the worn wooden railing. The ocean was big and vast before him like this. The sun reflecting off it made him squint, but even so… it was gorgeous. There were families spread out on blankets and under umbrellas.

Again, the thought that maybe Doe had one of those made his stomach flutter uncomfortably. As the adrenaline from running away from the hospital wore off, it was becoming increasingly clear that that was a stupid decision. He should have gone back. He should have met with their therapist and tried to discover his old self, if it was possible.

Because what was there for him out here? He had no I.D, no life story, no money. He wouldn't last long.

On those dazzling waves, a surfer cut through the sunlight. Doe watched them reach the crest of a wave and pivot, riding its momentum down towards the shore.

He had at least one option, and that was a hell of a lot better than zero.

He'd been found on the northern tip of Costa, so that was where he went. Doe walked along the beach for a couple miles, letting the cool water pool around his feet as damp sand squished between his toes. He saw pretty shells and the soggy remains of sand castles built during low tide.

He found Damon easily enough. He was sitting on the sand, his surfboard stuck into it, eating a sandwich with his legs stretched out in front of him. He wasn't alone; he had a couple friends sitting with him and more out on the water on their own surfboards.

Doe was a little awkward approaching him, but when Damon's eyes flicked over his new haircut and then the necklace around his neck he grinned. "You're free!" he said.

"You could say that," Doe answered, raising a hand at the two girls and the other man sitting and looking at him. "They'd probably say 'escaped.'"

Damon whistled. He looked him up and down. "So that's it?" He asked.

Doe knew what he was asking. "That's it," he confirmed. "I've got nothing. Thought I'd try to find you. Figured you could… point me in the right direction, or something."

"I don't know much about that kind of thing," Damon said. He walked towards the water a bit to give them some privacy and Doe followed. "I used to have a real job and all that. Now I just surf. Help out at the environmental centers around here."

"What did you do before?"

Damon sighed, folding his arms. He was in a wetsuit, and something about it seemed familiar. "Was in the military," he sighed. "ShinRa. Can't say I'm too proud of it."

"Hm." Doe didn't know how to answer that. Half of the hospital staff talked about ShinRa reverently and the other half seemed to hate it.

"You know," Damon said, studying him. "Before that haircut you looked a lot like one of my old Commanders."

"Oh?" Doe's heart beat erratically in his chest.

"Yeah, kinda. Don't get your hopes up—he's dead. Defected from SOLDIER—that's the group I used to be part of—and took a big part of the forces with him. Was pronounced Killed in Action a year or so later. I left around when he and another CO I really looked up to deserted. ShinRa really ain't all I convinced myself it was."

"Oh." Doe felt so foolish, having these flat responses to everything everybody told him. He heard them, it was just… a lot to process, still.

"Surfing's a lot better than killing or doing their dirty work," Damon said, stretching. The sunlight looked so good on his skin. "I like this life. You wanna hang with us for a couple days until you figure out what you wanna do with yours?"

Doe answered, his throat parched again, "I'd love that."

Damon eyed him. "Come on. I haven't taught anyone how to surf in a while but I can give it a try."

The small group shared their lunch with him. "You really don't remember _anything_?" asked one of Damon's friends, a redhead named Ronnie. His long hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Most of the guys seemed to have long hair. It was a relaxed kind of thing, Doe realized, finding he liked it.

"Nope."

A girl, not much past fifteen, asked him with excitement in her voice, "Do you have a name?"

"I've been calling myself—well, forget it. Any ideas?"

Everyone threw options around. Damon was convinced Doe should be _Damon II_ , making the teenager Salome cackle and throw a bottle of sunscreen at him. Other options were _Reginald, Alfred, Barnaby_ and others that grew increasingly silly like _Jellyfish_ and _Mideel._ Nadi, who was a very macho type, laughed loudly and said, "You're a pretty type—what about Eleanor? _Jenny_?"

Doe leant back on his hands in the warm sand. The sun was burning his shoulders slightly but even that didn't feel awful, not with a crowd of tentative friends around him and the first bit of stability he'd felt since he woke up. "'Jenny,'" Doe said, feeling the word around in his mouth. "Jenn. I think… I might like 'Jen.' Something about it feels right." At the look Nadi shot him he clarified, "One 'n,' I think."

"Jen," Damon said, looking at him strangely. He squinted, as if studying his face. "That's an interesting choice."

"Oh yeah?"

Damon finished his study and nodded to himself, looking out over the dunes. The grasses on top swayed in the breeze coming off the ocean. "Yeah. It suits you."

The man's name was Jen.


	2. Chapter 2

_Popping up_ on the sand made Jen feel silly. While his new acquaintances—perhaps even friends—were enjoying themselves out on the water Jen performed drill after agonizing drill back on the shore with a borrowed surfboard, staring wistfully out at the small pack of surfers.

Damon Klarke had been a SOLDIER. Second Class, even, which Jen learned was pretty impressive. There were only a handful of First Classes and they were some of the best warriors on the planet. Looking at Damon, Jen wouldn't really have guessed. He was muscular, sure, but most of the surfing crowd was.

The way he instructed Jen though, and whipped him into proper surfing material reeked of a military background.

"Down!" Damon barked, and Jen dropped to his stomach from his riding stance. The strong muscles of his back and shoulders worked as he began paddling in the air, as if he was out on the water.

"Pop up!"

Jen placed his hands beneath his chest as if he was going to do a push-up. In one quick, fluid motion he pushed up powerfully with his arms and worked his core, tucking his legs up beneath him. He was standing now, his knees slightly bent.

"Your feet are too far apart," Damon said, and nudged Jen's ankle with a sandy toe. "This isn't a skateboard."

Jen adjusted his stance accordingly. His posture was corrected a bit more, Damon's warm hands firm on his hips and thighs. When everything was right Jen held the position for a long moment, imagining he was out on that clear, turquoise water too.

"Down!"

Jen dropped to his stomach.

Even after a few hours of this Jen wasn't tired. He had what Nadi, one of his new surfer friends, called 'freakish' stamina. It meant that he was making remarkable progress with learning how to surf. He could keep going long after the others were tired, though he was starting to understand the value of relaxing, too. It meant that he would go for long runs along the beach in the morning. He still did not own shoes, a week into his new life, but it wasn't a huge deal. Costa was not a 'no shirt, no shoes, no service' kind of place.

Besides—other than physical exercise, there was not a whole lot for Jen to do. He had no identification, no references, no legitimacy. He was off the grid, a ghost in this highly-modernized world he'd woken in.

While Jen was sure he _was_ somebody, and had done things in his past life, there wasn't a way he could see to access all of that that didn't involve going back to the hospital and possibly to jail.

"I'm going to a friend's house for dinner," Salome told him. She was just fifteen, homeless, and stuck to Damon and his crew for protection and support. The sun was setting now, lighting the Costa beaches ablaze. The two of them sat in the sand, Jen staring with some frustration at the waves breaking.

Both of their stomachs grumbled. Thus far Jen was surviving entirely on food gifts from his friends. Damon would buy him an extra sub or Ronnie would bring him a carefully-packaged dinner from home, complete with plastic silverware and condiment packets. He wasn't sure what Salome did.

"A friend's house?" Jen asked, raising an eyebrow.

"It's like a party," she answered, "A big barbecue with lots of people. They won't care if I bring a friend—no one will even notice."

The thought of hanging out with teens didn't thrill him, but Jen's stomach twinged again and he found himself agreeing. They used the free showers by a busy entrance to the tip of the boardwalk and Jen awkwardly asked Damon if he had a shirt Jen could borrow. All he owned were those shorts still and the underwear underneath which were becoming increasingly thin with all the scrubbings he gave them in the shower stall in the absence of a washing machine.

"Going somewhere fancy?" Damon asked with his crooked grin.

"Somewhere where being shirtless might not be appreciated," Jen quipped. To his surprise, Damon pulled his own t-shirt over his head and tossed at him. It was warm in his hands from the man's skin and the day of sun.

"You can borrow it. Hell, you can keep it."

A shirt would be nice. Every day Jen's pale shoulders burned, but by the end of the day—to everyone's amazement—it would be healed, if a bit freckly.

He thanked Damon, and he and Salome bade the others goodbye. Jen's surfboard was an extra of Ronnie's, sort of—a friend of his had gone blind in the past year and it sat in a shed since. It was a longboard, good for beginners, and Jen was sort of sad to leave it behind.

Salome—though sometimes she preferred 'Sal'—was a tall, gangly kid with tan skin that tanned further and didn't burn. Her clothes were always too big for her and hung off her bony frame. Jen knew she didn't eat enough, and experiencing homelessness at that age (or any age) was hard on a body.

Jen raised an eyebrow at her as they walked up a street lined with crowded motels. "So we're going to a friend's house?"

"Sort of a friend," she answered. Her curly hair, usually in damp ringlets that fell into her eyes and to her shoulders, was pulled back into a ponytail and she played with the end of it. "She was in my grade from third to seventh. My school was pretty small so everyone knew everyone."

Jen almost asked what grade she was in now but held his tongue. Seeing her on the beach almost continuously from morning to night the entire past week was answer enough.

"Is she rich or something?"

"Oh yeah, _absolutamente_. Her house is huge and they have this big pool in the backyard with like, waterfalls going over the edges."

She chattered on about the place and Jen listened absently, his eyes sliding over everything they passed. While the downtown area was rich colors and bright neon this area, more residential than commercial, was pale pastels. It smelled of salt and marsh.

Jen slowed as they passed a community board in the shade of some trees. All sorts of things were tacked on top of each other, but in front on the left was an advertisement or a theater production called LOVELESS, with weekly performances throughout the summer.

"Jen?" Salome asked, turning around, her ratty flip-flops dragging on the sidewalk. "Anything fun happening soon?"

"That play looks good," Jen said, his voice warm. Something about the flyer was appealing to him. Maybe if he got money one of these days… he'd go see it.

Sal's cell phone, which she guarded like a mother chocobo, rang and she talked to someone in a language that wasn't Common for the rest of the walk. (Curiously, Jen understood most of her end of the conversation. It had him thinking—maybe he was a wordly guy, or maybe his best friend was from the area. There were unlimited reasons why he could understand the language.)

The house in question was hardly a _house_ —it was a damned mansion. Jen tilted his head, studying the pretentious pillars on the front porch and the paved walkway leading to it.

Hands on his hips, Jen sighed, "Hideous."

Salome giggled, tucking away her phone. "You're always so _pícara_."

Jen shrugged. "Maybe I was some sort of critic before."

"One of those guys on TV who fixes up ugly houses."

Jen humored her, pointing things out as they walked around the fenced-in back of the house where music and voices drifted. "Those shutters. Horrible shade of yellow. And I don't understand those curtains at all."

When his young friend laughed again Jen smiled to himself, quietly proud. Salome led them through a gap in the fence and into a massive backyard. It was packed with teenagers.

 _Goddess,_ Jen thought, and then: _Am I religious?_

He pondered that as they weaved through the crowd. The _Goddess_ thing had come out of nowhere. From what he understood most of the people in this area believed in a male god or a spirit of the ocean. It was a good distraction, because all around him were people he had no business being around—especially since most of them were half-naked from swimming in the pool.

Jen wondered how old he actually was. Perhaps thirty—perhaps just younger than that?

"Jen," Salome said, snapping him out of his thoughts. She pressed a paper plate into his hand; they were at a buffet table. It wasn't fancy fare, not with serving a bunch of ninth-graders or whoever and all their friends, but there was _so much of it_.

The two of them loaded up and retreated to a secluded corner of the backyard. They sat in the grass, Jen balanced his plate on his crossed legs, and they tucked in.

It was loud. The music over the speakers wasn't to his taste, really, but occasionally one would play and to his surprise he'd discover he knew the words after hearing a snippet of the intro. Memory was a strange thing.

Salome seemed to guess what he was thinking. "Do you think you're going to get your memory back?"

"I don't know," Jen said, and then took a bite of a hot dog so huge it took some time before he could continue. "I don't know if I want to."

"You might not want it back?"

"I'm conflicted. Considering how they found me, and some of the things I found out at the hospital, it seems like the life I had before wasn't very good. I don't want to remember anything traumatic."

Salome jiggled her knees. She was sitting kind of awkwardly; Jen figured she was trying to keep her legs, which hadn't been shaved in a while, out of his line of sight. Jen angled himself a little differently, pretending to be interested in a flowering bush to his right, to give her some space. After a minute she said, "…But what if you have a family?"

"That's why I'm torn," he sighed. "There could be people out there looking for me."

"They probably miss you. You seem like a nice enough guy."

"Heh. Thanks." Jen twisted his mouth. "You need some napkins?"

She did, and Jen got up, leaving her for a moment. He breathed in deeply, weaving through the crowd and easily seeing over everyone's head. At the table he snagged a couple napkins and another can of soda—the bubbles made him sneeze, he'd discovered, but he liked the fruity ones. He made awkward eye contact with two girls in colorful t-shirts eyeing him.

As Sal had told him on the walk over, his hipsterish undercut, height and age were only good things. He gave a weak wave hello back to them, and when one girl bravely asked if he knew a certain girl, who Jen assumed was the one hosting the party, he said no and that he was with a cousin of his. Then he split.

"Hey, Sal," Jen asked as he returned. "What's the Silver Elite?"

The look the teen sent him made the side of his mouth quirk up into a smile. "I spoke to some girls a moment ago and one had a t-shirt with that on it. It seems familiar."

"No wonder," Salome answered. She seemed to have taken advantage of Jen's absence to dig into the messier items on her plate, and now she had smears of barbecue sauce around her lips. " They're a really big group and do all kinds of events. They're the fanclub for Sephiroth—he's the coolest SOLDIER."

"Like what Damon used to be?"

"Yup! Damon doesn't really like telling me about when he was a SOLDIER but I ask him about it all the time anyway." She giggled, and Jen held out his fist for a bump.

"Did Damon have a fanclub?"

Salome laughed so hard half her chips fell down onto the grass. " _Mierda!_ No! He's not cool enough to have fans. There's only a couple of fanclubs." She held out her hand and counted off on her fingers. "The Silver Elite, for Sephiroth. The Keepers of Honor, for Angeal Hewley. Their numbers aren't so big anymore because for a while everyone thought he was dead, but he's okay and back in SOLDIER. My mom is a _huge_ Angeal fan. "Red Leather, which is still really active even though Genesis Rhapsodos _did_ die—like, two years ago or something at this point. He's not my type but my cousin has his poster."

"Wow," Jen said, trying to keep track of it all.

"And now there's Puppy Love, for Zack Fair. He's the only First Class along with Sephiroth and Angeal—Angeal gave him the nickname 'Puppy' and even though he hates it everyone else thought it was really cute." Sal seemed to puff out her chest. "I'm in Puppy Love, but don't tell Damon."

"I thought you said Sephiroth was the coolest."

"Sephiroth _is_ cooler than Zack, but Sephiroth doesn't do much these days. He used to interact with the Silver Elite a little bit or at least get out and about in public and now he's all shut up. Everyone thinks he's sad about Genesis' death. Anyway, Zack is the hottest one—and he's so _funny_ , you should see his Twitter."

"I'll make sure to check it out," Jen said dryly. "Damon wouldn't be happy knowing you're in a SOLDIER's fanclub?"

"No. He really hates them, 'cause of what ShinRa does to the environment and stuff. Global warming. And the mako in the ocean—Damon says he can see how it's hurting the peaceful monsters in there and making them aggressive."

All this was more than Jen had ever heard Sal say at once. It was nice to hear. He let her chatter on about Zack Fair and a couple other newer fanclubs for a while longer, which transitioned into this one girl at her school that she'd attended until she dropped out who was a Zack fan but really _sucked_ and almost ruined Puppy Love for her, but she met this one friend on a forum who was way cooler and they still messaged pretty regularly, and. . .

They got seconds and thirds, eating until their stomachs hurt, and then Salome pulled some zippable gallon bags out of her back pocket with a wicked smile. Jen couldn't even feel bad about stealing food from a bunch of teenagers—when it was about survival, he couldn't afford to.

They took their time walking home. The sidewalk was still warm against Jen's bare feet but it was nearly dark now. The bright screen of Sal's cell phone illuminated her face.

Protectiveness welled in Jen's throat. "Sal, where do you stay at night?"

She glanced at him. "Ronnie puts me on youth housing lists. Most nights I have a shelter to stay at. If I don't I have some friends I ask." She shrugged, her shoulders tight, obviously not wanting to talk about it.

"I'm glad you've got options. That's nice of Ronnie."

"Yeah—he works in city hall. So he has access to a bunch of stuff normal people don't, and he knows how to do the listservs and housing stuff for me. He's really smart."

"He really works there?" Jen pictured the guy in his head—long red hair, freckles, skin a lovely shade somewhere between Sal and Damon, but closer to Sal. He smoked weed out of a small pipe most of the time and Jen had seen him doodling in the sand with a small stick in the late afternoon today.

"Yeah. He comes and hangs out with us when he gets out of work at five. Haven't you noticed that?"

"…I guess I did sort of notice that."

"He says he can't take my mom's name off of all my documents and stuff until I'm 18—I don't really get it, it's legal stuff. But he does what he can."

"She sucks?"

"She sucks," Sal confirmed. "Didn't hit me or anything, that's what everyone always asks. I got a little sister and she stopped paying any attention to me. Neglect and stuff, I guess. I dunno—she could only see Sofía. So I left to see if she'd miss me if I wasn't around, and she never did."

"Do you ever see her?"

"Holidays, sometimes. She goes home to Gongaga for a lot of those with the rest of our family so not those. She pays for my cell phone, like that makes up for everything."

Family was complicated. Jen's thoughts drifted back to his on the way home—his imaginary one, which may or may not have actually existed.

He dropped Salome off at the shelter and made sure she checked in alright, then drifted back towards the tip of the island. The dual moons' light reflected off the surface of the ocean; choppy tonight. It hadn't yet rained since Jen left the hospital but when it did, he'd have to get out of it. He used a public restroom, splashed some water on his face and swished it around in his mouth, and curled up on a bench he was quickly thinking of as 'his.'

The cool night air felt good on his skin. The breeze stirred his hair. Damon's t-shirt made things comfier; the rough wood of the bench didn't scratch him as much.

There wasn't much to do but close his eyes and wait for morning, so he did.

* * *

Jen survived that first week out of the hospital. Then he survived another.

It really was about survival, he'd realized the day before with Sal. By some miracle he hadn't died that day on the beach or during any of the days previous that he couldn't remember but which clearly had been hellish. He wasn't gone like Genesis Rhapsodos or whoever else—Jen was _here_ , even if the space he occupied in the world right now wasn't all that grand.

It was still precious.

He didn't want to just _survive_ though. His only pair of shorts were starting to wear thin and he knew there was only so long he could get by on the kindness of his surfer buddies. Jen wanted to make it as much as he could in this new life. It was his, and nobody else's—not even his old self's.

He was in the water now, paddling around and practicing more of the basics in the shallow waters under Damon's watchful eye.

Jen wanted to fuck him, honestly. Maybe it was something about having a critical eye on him at all times but it ignited this… urge to _perform_ in Jen. He found himself faking almost-falls so Damon would reach out and steady him, or starting fights where he'd dunk Damon and then the other man would wrap his arms around him and throw him a good ten feet across the water with his ex-SOLDIER strength.

Jen wondered if his Past Self had been straight. He certainly wasn't—in fact, after a couple hours spent thinking about it (because what else did he have to do other than practice surfing than to think about his Past Self) Jen figured that he didn't have a preference any way for any gender or lack of at all.

But yes, being in the water now (his thoughts skittered back to Damon far too often like that)—he was getting better and better and soon he'd try catching his first wave. Maybe after he got a proper bathing suit.

There were a lot of things he needed—wax for his borrowed board, clothes, the security knowing that future meals were coming. A roof.

But he was a nobody.

So, he asked the guy he figured knew the most about what to do next a couple questions.

He found Ronnie one evening sitting on his board, his legs stretched out in front of him. He always looked kind of tired, though Jen had chalked it up to him being really stoned. They didn't talk a lot—Ronnie was out far on the water more often than not, and that was land he couldn't traverse just yet.

Jen stuck Ronnie's friend's board into the sand and sat down beside Ronnie, closer to the tail end. "What's up?" he asked.

Ronnie had been frowning intensely at the horizon. "I was thinking that I'd like to paint this."

"Oh. You paint?"

"Sometimes. I don't really have the time for it anymore." Ronnie always spoke carefully and with a posh accent at odds with Nadi's, who was from Bone Village and used so much slang Jen couldn't keep track of what he was saying most of the time.

"I didn't know you worked for city hall either. Sal told me the other day. That's pretty cool."

Ronnie snorted. "Not what you expected? I have to say—getting to come here in the evenings is a necessary de-stresser after what I deal with during the day."

"What do you do?"

"I'm the city Treasurer's personal assistant."

"Damon told me pretty recently that the local government here…"

"Is a circus? Yeah—the treasurer is pretty useless; he's going through some things. So I guess you could say I do two jobs. It's not all bad; he cooks a good breakfast, and I love the guy."

Jen whistled after it sank in. Sleeping with city government. He hadn't known he could whistle. "I was wondering if you had any advice for me. Is there anything someone like me can do to try to get established?"

"You can visit me tomorrow on my lunch break," Ronnie said simply. At Jen's look he said, "I've been waiting for you to ask. I'd be corrupt if I just _offered_ illegal services to a friend."

Jen slowly smiled—Ronnie smiled back, tucking some of his long hair behind his ear.

"Damon's been running you ragged. Want to practice your freestyle with me? You're a terrible swimmer."

* * *

He found his way to city hall the next day even if it took him a while. Costa del Sol was a big city, and he had no money for the subway. Ronnie let him in a side entrance, dressed in a crisp suit. His whole demeanor was different; he walked taller, had perfect posture, and he didn't smell like pot.

Jen quietly followed behind him, frowning at his dirty bare feet on the shiny linoleum.

Ronnie shut them both in some office—the three people who worked here were on their lunch breaks—and printed him out a fake I.D. _Jen Doe_ , at Jen's request, even though it 'sounds fake as shit,' according to Ronnie. He looked nice in the quick picture Ronnie snapped; he really liked his fancy free haircut, even if he wasn't sure it was totally him.

From there they went downstairs to a different wing and Ronnie typed furiously on a computer keyboard while Jen kept a lookout on the hall. According to Ronnie the security cameras in the building hadn't worked for years despite all the signs warning people they were under surveillance.

"Budget cuts," Ronnie sighed, sounding just like a man who had to almost single-handedly manage the city's finances.

In twenty minutes Jen had a fake record online. He had numbers verifying his existence and links to fake family members. He could rent property in Costa or get hired for a job.

"What I can't do is give you city funds. But this is a start."

"This is so much," Jen said, shaking his head. "I can't thank you enough."

"You'll find a way, I'm sure." Ronnie clapped him on the shoulder. "Now get out—I've got three texts from a man in the treasurer's office who wants to fuck."

* * *

Jen survived another two weeks. This was a whole month now—a whole month into his new life, and Jen was far off out from the shore.

Damon was nearby. Very close, in fact. His leg brushed against Jen's. Jen wore a brand new bathing suit—red, which he'd decided was his favorite color—that he'd bought with the money earned from doing some odd jobs for Nadi. The sun was warm on Jen's face and the feeling of the surfboard strap around his ankle familiar now, and not itchy.

"It's yours," Damon said, and gave Jen an enthusiastic slap on the ass as he started paddling parallel to shore. A big wave was coming—but not rough, not like the ones Damon and the others could handle. He heard Damon yell something behind him, though he hardly paid attention, and immediately popped up on his board like he'd practiced.

Riding the wave was the coolest fucking thing Jen had done in his month-long existence. It wasn't saying a lot, but it _was_ genuinely something. His stomach dropped as he nearly lost his balance for a second, but then he compensated. The top of the wave curved over his head, water above him, below him, and around him—and yet he was still riding, still coasting along on this awesome thing.

They called it the _green room_ —when water surrounded a surfer, transporting them somewhere far away. It was as quiet here as it was loud. The Costa waters glittered around him. Jen turned his head; in the swell of the wave he could see a jellyfish. He could have reached out and touched it.

He heard Damon hollering somewhere, undoubtedly proud of him. Jen's smile grew so wide it hurt his face.

Then he wiped out.

But Jen hardly cared—he popped his head above the surface a moment later, his powerful limbs not having trouble fighting the current. He was laughing.

"That was _great_!" he called to Damon and to shore, where Ronnie was smoking a joint and Sal was waving her arms.

Things were coming together.


End file.
